Berlin Review: Is the Freely Distributed Doc ‘Pirate Bay: Away From Keyboard’ Ahead Of Its Time?

Berlin Review: Is the Freely Distributed Doc 'Pirate Bay: Away From Keyboard' Ahead Of Its Time?

A funny thing happened in the moments leading up to the Berlin International Film Festival world premiere of “The Pirate Bay: Away From Keyboard,” a documentary about the prosecution of the titular Swedish file sharing site’s founders. Minutes before the screening, director Simon Klose called a friend up in front of the audience and asked him to unlock a version of the movie uploaded to YouTube, appropriately setting the stage for a tale focused on internet freedoms. The lights went down; the screen lit up. But before “TPB AFK” started, the same warning sign preceding all movies at the festival appeared.

“Film piracy is illegal,” it read, an inadvertent irony not lost on the majority of the room. Chuckles circulated. In a way, the story had begun before a single frame. At the root of “TPB AFK” is a fundamental tension between conventional views on copyright law and the emerging standards of digitally savvy users. Klose’s entertaining, passionate documentary wholeheartedly endorses the latter group, and its sympathetic stance is infectious — but only if you’re already amendable to the general cause.

The communal spirit at that screening was not unlike the one at the center of Klose’s project. The filmmaker spent five years tracking the plight of lively young Pirate Bay founders Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svarthold and Peter Sound, who along with investor Carl Lundstrom faced a menacing lawsuit filed by several Hollywood studios in 2008. The courtroom antics carried on until 2011, when several of the defendants faced jail time and million-dollar fines, an outcome portrayed here in tragic terms for reasons that have little to do with right and wrong. “TPB AFK” mainly focuses on illustrating the likability of its subjects rather than the assumed righteousness of their cause.

Of course, it’s easy to see why the men raised the ire of rich companies losing money on pirated products. A trio of Mark Zuckerberg-type prodigies with a punk rock twist, they certainly make effective claims to judicial powers by pointing out that individual users rather than the site itself are culpable of introducing illegal content to the servers. But Hollywood needed a scapegoat and these grinning whippersnappers fit the bill.

Needless to say, “TPB AFK” unabashedly sides with its controversial defendants, but focuses less on formulating their case than providing a closeup perspective on the experience of it from the inside. From its first scenes to the last, the movie owes much to Klose’s access. He rides alongside the giddy Peter, a spokesperson for the group, as he recounts Frederik’s comically inept attempt to flee the country. They joke about the court’s incapacity to comprehend their tech lingo, confusing “bit” with “bytes” and other linguistic errors. The bearded Gottfrid is possibly the pluckiest of the group, dancing around interrogations with succinct non-answers worthy of a bonafide comedy routine. On the whole, their courtroom charade comes across like a 21st century version of the Chicago 7 trial, and stands on equal footing in its evidently unjustified proceedings. Far from aspirational outlaws, Frederik, Goffrid and Peter are viewed as party-loving pranksters who just happen to have brains.

But while “TPB AFK” effectively embodies their enthusiasm, it can’t match their smarts. Unlike the related “RiP: A Remix Manifesto,” which used remix artist Girl Talk to explore the boundaries of digitally-empowered fair use, the linear “Pirate Bay” provides a scattered overview of events that foregrounds the sincere frustrations the men endured over the years. For that same reason, it’s actually more accessible than other treatments of the subject from a growing number of books and other media produced by a progressive community of digital rights activists. As the title suggests, “TPB AFK” is about people more than their work.

So we see them, more often than not, in off-the-cuff mode: Peter gets hammered and sings the praises of his support group The Pirate Bureau (“they’re really tight”). One of them idly plays Angry Birds on a smartphone moments before hearing the court’s verdict. Their insistence that, contrary to media characterizations, they’re “just a couple of guys in a chartroom” at work sounds about right. “TPB AFK” doesn’t explore their genius so much as humanize it.

Of course, curious parties can easily open a coupe of tabs in the same browser playing “TPB AFK” on YouTube to learn more about the Pirate Bay founders’ accomplishments. Klose’s alternative release strategy ensures that anyone intrigued by the case has a chance to put more than faces to names; Klose provides full-fledged personalities. At the same time, the only people truly interested in the movie’s perspective probably already favored it. “TPB AFK” addresses them at its very end with a credit pleading viewers to “share this film online.”

As much as some people may do that, the movie’s limited angle will surely alienate those who aren’t versed in the topic or inclined to invest time in watching a documentary on YouTube with no immediate hook. The lawyers for the studios and the Anti-Piracy Bureau get little screen time, but they represent a perspective that has yet to wane. But several entertainment industries view piracy as an arch-nemesis. By holding that perspective at arm’s length, “TPB AFK” only preaches to viewers already open to its cause. In the years to come, its value could shift along with the evolution of copyright discourse, at which point “TPB AFK” might capture a transitional moment in the history of the information age. For the time being, however, it merely confirms that the battle rages on.

Criticwire grade: B+

HOW WILL IT PLAY? Well-received as the opening documentary of Berlin’s Panorama section, “Pirate Bay” will similarly play like gangbusters at the SXSW Film Festival next month and gain plenty of attention online. A shorter cut for TV may boost its appeal in ancillary markets, but as long as the movie is available online its theatrical prospects are severely limited. Watch the film in its entirety here.